


The Things He Holds in the Dark

by tinynerdkitten



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blind Character, Canon Disabled Character, Childhood Memories, Disabled Character, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, I'm An Horrible Person, I'm Sorry, Matt is a Cinnamon Roll, Memories, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Suffering, but not at the way i do, he is trying so hard, i deserve hell, i just write about his pain, i want to protect him, we should love matt more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 10:17:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11987766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinynerdkitten/pseuds/tinynerdkitten
Summary: The sky was one of the last things he saw. That and the face of his father.He doesn’t remember either of them.(Or: Matt is a cinnamon roll and I love angst things, so this is just him thinking about his past and his feelings )





	The Things He Holds in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This is for my lovely friend Ali, the most patient and adorable person in the entire world, who helped me as a beta reader (and more because she is amazing). Love you <3  
> Btw this is just me writing angst because pain is never enough for a fangirl (I guess???)  
> Also I love Matt and introspection, so here I am.  
> See you at the end. Enjoy!

_ Prompt: start your story with a sentence that is genuinely happy and upbeat, no double meanings. End it with the same sentence but this time it’s chilling, dark, horrifying etc. _

 

_“I love you, dad”_

The child’s voice is acute, thin but joyful.

It’s like a thin glass pane, lighted by sunrays. A pane that is not simple, not dirty and blurred by the dust of life, but new and decorated: a stained-glass window, through which the sunlight shines and illuminates everything that lies beneath, the floor, the walls, the objects, the people, a symphony of blue, red and green.

A mosaic composed with patience and attention like the ones that glittered, precious and embedded as jewels, ancient as the faith of that place, within the walls of the church were he used to go as a child.

Somehow, he still remembers them. He doesn’t remember the old priest’s face, nor his voice. He doesn’t remember the pews, the central nave or the paintings and although he knows he has seen them countless times, he can’t bring those images back to his mind, not even with his best effort.

But he can recall the mosaics. Not the figures formed by small, colored pieces of glass, no. He remembers them as an indistinct and meaningless pattern of lights and colors, perhaps because to a child those are the most fascinating things. Not the mosaic itself, but its consequences, scattered everywhere. On the altar, on the priests’ garment, on yours father’s suit, the one he used only on Sunday. On your hands, clasped in prayer. Small hands, soft hands, smooth hands. Hands chapped by the cold and the throwing of snowballs, scratched by all those times he has fallen from his bicycle, puckered by sea water, stained with paint. A child’s hands.

A child’s hand holding a warmer and bigger one, while the other is wrapped around an ice cream. Sugar crystals, vanilla seeds, milk from two different places, chemicals and the hands of someone who surely didn’t spent the previous night alone, for him. Happiness and affection for the kid. Affection radiating from all of his little body, his warm skin and accelerated heartbeat.

A son who loves his father, as he proves, as he states, without filters or lies.

A gust of wind shakes the tree branches under which he is sitting, making them whisper to each other, exchanging and sharing secrets quietly and expectantly like girls among the school desks, and rustle gently like lovers’ sheets in the cold night. An oak.

As they move, the leaves curtains, like natural mosaics of plants ~~~~, leave access to the sun, and the warmth strikes forcefully his face.

Better for the kid to eat that ice cream quickly.

In the park, runners shoes and strollers wheels creak differently, yet somehow similarly.

A few meters further, he can hear voices and footsteps of children, excited screams mixed with

the noise of the playground pieces and their toys.

A rattle, pebbles pulled around, a skipping rope hitting the ground. A swing squeaking, perhaps because of the kid’s weight or its age, seesaw springs screaming for help.

He wonders if it’s possible that they will collapse, sooner or later: obviously, they have been already there for quite a while, and if this wasn’t enough they are now carrying a bit too many children at once. 

That cry is rhythmic, and probably can be heard by the kids as well. Maybe they can’t hear the wood crunching and the screws anchoring it to the ground trembling and shaking with the metal plate, but the springs make so much noise that they can’t be ignored by him and neither by them.

Surely, the kids who have just badly ~~~~fallen on the ground have now realized that their idea was not good, at least.

One of them has scratched his knee and now he’s crying and he sighs heavily as his mother does the same.

“Matty, don’t cry. It’s nothing, you barely got hurt at all, come on...”

Oh, the irony of fate.

Her voice is kind, but tinted with a pinch of concern. The never-ending and perpetual anxiety of mothers, that he only learned to know through those of the others.

He has never seen his mother’s face.

The boy gets back to playing and the woman sits once again, while he gently transmits, with a delicate movement of his wrist, a rotatory motion to the coffee in the still tepid plastic cup he’s holding.

The liquid caresses its prison as the waves of the calm sea do with the keels of the ships in the harbor.

At the very least, this is the most similar sound he might find to describe it, if someone asked. Not that it does.

He has seen ships, sometimes, but he can’t remember any specific one. He just knows that most are large and big, the tall mainmasts standing out against the sky, cables creating a perfect engineering web; giant resting anchored to land they don’t belong to, sleeping monster in a sea that is their home.

The sea, too, it’s nothing but a slab of light reflections and what should be blue, as far as he knows.

It’s hard to think about colors. If he has to, what comes to his mind are usually objects related to them.

Green: blades of grass. Orange: the sunset. Yellow: a lemon. Gray: the eyes of someone he once had known. Black: the neighbor’s cat. What he sees now, if it’s possible to call it this way. He would call it darkness. Not a real color. Pink: the skirt of the waitress who served him a milkshake, the day of the accident. Brown: the eyes of his teacher. Silver: his grandmother’s beads. Red: the blood of his father.

“Mum! A plane! Look! Up there!”

Fast-paced steps of a little girl running past him while trying not to lose sight of the object in the sky, fluttering pigtails caressing her face and small, heavy breaths leaving her tiny open mouth.

Almost following a long forgotten reflex more than his will, he raises his head to where he knows the machine is, flying through the clouds. White: the clouds.

Light blue: the same sky that the little girl is probably pointing with her fingertip.

The sky was one of the last things he saw. That and the face of his father.

He doesn’t remember either of them.

He knows that the sky is blue, during the day, when it’s not cloudy but clear, as he knows that in the night it’s dark and full of bright stars, if you are lucky enough to live in a place where you can see them. But he doesn’t remember it. He can’t remember how a thunderstorm looks like, with the lightning crossing the sky, or the moonlight, glowing so softly on the glass of his bedroom.

They are all images that disappeared, slowly but inevitably. It’s certain that it has happened gradually, but he doesn’t really know when the lack of memory had became permanent and irreversible. Or at least, he doesn’t know for those generic images part of the common, everyday life. Instead, he remembers of those of his father’s face.

He gets up, sighing and bringing his head back in the right position, only to find a baby’s hand pulling the hem of his jacket before he can make any other move.

He knew he was there, but he hadn’t paid attention to him.

“Hey. What’s up?” he asks, lowering his head towards him as any other adult would do to speak with the boy.

“Why are your glasses so dark, sir?”

The children and their innocence, their questions without malice. The children and their curiosity. Children who don’t understand, whose understanding comes always after, always when it’s too late.

“Because these are special glasses for us” he answers, smiling softly at him “For people like me. So the others can’t or don’t have to see our eyes”

“Why? What’s wrong with them?”

He can almost feel him frown. He knows the voice of this child, he was one of those on the seesaw. He can’t be more than six years old and he hears the quick steps of an exasperated mother approaching. Low-heeled shoes, a lightweight and short dress. Young. That morning she has cooked chicken. Judging by the spices, an eastern recipe.

“They… don’t work well” he replies, sitting back and leaning forward a bit, to allow himself to be at the kid’s face level, who is now reaching a hand out towards him, without letting go of the gray fabric with the other.

“Can I try them?” he asks, the voice of the woman now scolding him “Matty! What are you doing? Don’t bother the gentleman. I’m so sorry, I got distracted just for a second, I thought he was playing over there...” she babbles her apology, pulling her son back, and the boy loses his grip on his jacket.

She sounds really mortified by the way she speaks.

Matty. The smell of copper. The kid fallen from the seesaw, his scratched little knee now clean and covered with a band-aid.

“No problem” he stops her, raising his hand, now free from the coffee that he had left on the bench, next to him “He is not bothering me. Go on”

He carefully takes off his glasses, holding them out and waiting for the child to take them. His eyes stand firm, apparently looking right in front of him, while clammy, warm and chubby small fingers brush against his hand and grab the glasses.

He feels him putting them on, his mother still scolding him, half-voice.

"So? How are they?"

"Dark" is the answer he receives after a while, the object which captured the child's attention now pressing against his palm, and he smiles with a slight puff.

"Really?" he says, though he knows it very well "Then now i know I’ve made the right choice, thank you" replies, putting them back on.

"Can't you see they are dark?"

"Matthew! I'm so sorry, he's just a kid, excuse him, really I’m so sorry..." now she sounds embarrassed and ashamed for the question her son asked, but he quickly stops her again with a sharp gesture.

"Do not worry, it's fine. No, I can't see it, Matty" it's weird how the name sounds in his own mouth, after such a long time. How many years passed since someone has called him that way? So many, since he had said it himself, since he had used that pretty diminutive of his own name.

"Because I'm blind. I can't see anything"

The kid stays silent for a second.

"But how do you-"

"Enough, Matthew. Say goodbye. We need to go, now. And I'm sure this man have something better to do than speaking with us. Come on"

The question is interrupted by the woman. The skin of her face is warm, a sign that she went red with embarrassment.

The boy puffs his cheeks, before talking again.

"Goodbye, Mr...?"

"Matt" he offers, holding his hand out "Matt, just like you"

"Goodbye, Mr. Matt!" he can hear him say, a tiny hand shaking his own in a way a bit too much enthusiastic and cheerful. He is also scratched there, on his small palm, covered in dirt.

"Goodbye. Thank you for your time."

And with that, he feels them move away from him, the child enthusiastically murmuring that the man with the suit and the dark glasses is called like him, did you hear mum?

He follows them as far as he can, until the end of the park’s path, when they turn to the right while he sighs, before getting up again and starting down alone in the evening soft light.

The now cold coffee makes the same noise of child’s boots splashing in a puddle when it touches the bottom of the trash bin, spilling violently out of the cup, pouring on the trash, the lid opened in the impact now useless.

Matty. Matt. Matthew.

His father had chosen that name, he had given him that nickname. He doesn’t even remember his voice.

Surprisingly and oddly, he remembers his scent, that cheap but nice and fresh aftershave he used to wear every morning, which was on the sheets and the pillows on Sunday mornings when he climbed in his bed to wake him up to go to the mass, which was on his skin when he hugged him tight and his face was pressed in the crook of his neck, his nose wiggling at the sharp sensation of the scratching short beard against his smooth cheek, the fragrance track he always smelled in the air when he went to the bathroom to wash his teeth and get ready for school.

His scent, his blood, and the feeling of his hands on his head.

Rough hands, calloused hands, wounded hands. Nervous, strong and bruised hands. A man’s hands. A boxer’s hands. Hands that maybe now look like the ones he’s now clenching in fists.

But his face, his eyes, the way he smiled. The way he called his name, his voice, his laughter. He doesn’t remember any of it, and that’s what he misses the most about him. The details, the small things that used to make him different form anyone else.

He spent hours and hours alone in his bed, in the night, before sleeping, trying to recall __every single things and detail about him, for weeks and months after the accident, after his death.

And yet, despite his desperate and stubborn child-like will not to forget, one day he realized he could no longer remember the shape of his chin. As time passed, he forgot his hair, the ways his broken nose curled, his eyebrows, the shape of his eyes, his lips, his ears. Until one night he fond himself horrified by the fact that now he could just recall his father figure as an indefinite silhouette, an indistinct and meaningless pattern of human features, likethe mosaics in the church.

He had cried a lot that night. He had let tears fall down his cheeks, his pain pouring out with them from his little broken heart. He had broken the frame on the wooden shelf, tearing the photograph out from the sharp glasses, ignoring the pain, passing his bleeding hands on the faces printed on it, over and over, as if this could make him see, as if his wounded fingertips could absorb the images from the ink and take it in his vein, bringing it up to his brain, to his empty and useless eyes, filling them, making them see his father’s face just one more time, just once.

But it hasn’t happened, it never happened, and in the end even his voice disappeared, confused with Foggy’s and all of the others still alive who could and can say his name and talk to him.

He has forgotten even his own face, but he doesn’t miss it as much as he does with his father’s.

His desire to see him again is still there. He thinks he will never disappear.

But this isn’t possible.

It hasn’t happened before and it doesn’t happen now, while his fingertips trace the cold glass of the frame behind which the picture on his grave is, before moving on the letters that form his name.

He traces them with care, affection, even devotion, as a pilgrim would do with a map tracing the way home, trying to remember, praying he could do it.

But even if he can’t, this doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change everything they have had, and now that he really thinks about it, there’s another thing he remember of his father, and it’s the love he always felt overflow from every gesture, every word, from the way he said his name that he can remember even without linking it to images, and his own love, similar to that of the child in the park, which is still there, fragile but untouched and shining, dripping from his adult voice now that, after so many years, he murmurs, once again:  _“I love you, dad.”_

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is the end! I hope you liked it. I know it’s not much but it’s my first fanfiction in english and it’s hard to write smoothly in another language. Please let me know what do you think about it, maybe with a comment. It’d make me very happy C: 
> 
> If you want to talk to me or follow me, my tumblr is: http://coelisspex.tumblr.com/  
> You can also find me on ig: _coelispex_ and pinterest: https://it.pinterest.com/coelisspex/


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